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STAFF CONTRIBUTORS

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Ariana Eunjung Cha writes about the economy for the Post and is the Web editor for its national economy and business section. She has served as the paper's bureau chief in Beijing, Shanghai and San Francisco and as a correspondent in Baghdad.

Brady Dennis writes about economic policy and financial regulation. Before coming to The Post in September 2008, he was a staff writer at the St. Petersburg Times in Florida. At the Post, he was a finalist for both the Pulitzer Prize and a Gerald Loeb Award for a three-part series he and a colleague wrote about the rise and fall of American International Group.

Zachary Goldfarb has covered the U.S. financial crisis for The Post for more than three years. Originally from Manhattan, he is a graduate of the Princeton University and now lives in Washington, D.C. He enjoys vegetarian cooking, is getting started as a cyclist and spends too much time obsessing over gadgets.

Jia Lynn Yang is a staff writer at The Washington Post who covers policy that affects corporate America. She's interested in taxes, regulation and all the ways that business and Washington try to influence and make sense of one another. Before joining The Post, Jia Lynn was a Washington correspondent for Fortune magazine.

Neil Irwin writes about the U.S. economy and the Federal Reserve. He has been at the Post since 2000 and has an MBA from Columbia Business School, where he was a Knight-Bagehot Fellow in Economics and Business Journalism. His interests include bond market data, cured pork products, and pinot noir.

Lori Montgomery writes about national economic policy emanating from the White House and Capitol Hill. A former foreign correspondent who traveled Europe pre-euro, she also covered domestic politics in such disparate locales as Dallas and Detroit. She has three kids, one dog and no time for your so-called "interests."

Ylan Q. Mui covers the consumer economy and has been a member of the Financial staff since 2005 and a staff writer since 2002. She is also an adjunct journalism instructor at the University of Maryland. Ylan graduated from Loyola University in New Orleans, where she was born and raised.

Howard Schneider covers international economics and trade for the Post. He has served in a variety of roles at the paper, three tours abroad in Israel, Egypt and Canada, and as economics editor. He is a native of Maryland's Eastern Shore, and proudly includes a chief oyster inspector among his ancestors.

Mike Shepard is the Night Editor for Economy and Business News. A graduate of Georgetown University, Mike has worked at the Post for 22 years in a variety of editing assignments. He spent 1997 teaching journalism in Brazil on a Fulbright scholarship and is a fluent speaker of Portuguese.

Political Economy explores how political forces in Washington and elsewhere in the world shape the economy and how corporate agendas influence political institutions and politicians. The blog offers new perspectives on the day's top economic and business stories with exclusive interviews with government officials and lawmakers, commentary from influential economists and analysis from Post reporters. Ariana Eunjung Cha is the blog's lead writer and Mike Shepard is the author of the daily economic agenda.

"The Obama campaign publicly supported the bank bailout and then repelled the populist measures to really hammer banker pay when they got into office. The financial reform bill didn't break up the banks, set leverage requirements in statute or do any of a number of other things that would've really hurt the financial industry. The auto bailout was designed to preserve the existence of America's auto industry, and even the Economist has admitted that the Obama administration did everything in its power to "restore both firms to health and then get out as quickly as possible." The various stimulus measures have been designed to directly support businesses or indirectly support the people who those businesses rely on."

Steve Pearlstein's Take

"Given the fragile state of the economy, this is no time to be raising taxes on the middle class, as nearly every dollar taxed is nearly a dollar not spent buying goods and services... At the same time, even conservative economists acknowledge that while the rich account for a disproportionate share of consumer spending, raising their taxes by a modest amount won't alter that spending or have much of a short-term impact on the economy. The reason: Wealthy people make considerably more than they spend, and they save the rest."

SEC pays $1 million to woman who ratted on her ex

By Zach Goldfarb

With powerful senators watching with a close eye, federal investigators search and search for evidence of insider trading in shares of Microsoft. One of Wall Street's best-known hedge fund managers is targeted, but the feds can't find proof. Years pass, and they close the case.

Then a nasty, and apparently unrelated,divorce battle ensues in Connecticut. A woman discovers evidence potentially implicating her husband and the hedge fund in an insider trading scandal. Investigators believe they've found a smoking gun; they shut down the fund and assess tens of millions of penalties. And then they pay $1 million to the woman for ratting on her ex.

It sounds like a movie script, but in fact it's the real-life story behind a recent Securities and Exchange case and could hint at the course of future cases as the agency capitalizes on brand-new powers to give out financial awards to a wide range of whistleblowers.

On Friday, the SEC said it would pay $1 million to Karen and Glen Kaiser of Southbury, Conn., who provided information and documents that helped the SEC finalize its case against Arthur J. Samberg, founder of the hedge fund Pequot Capital Management, and David E. Zilkha, a former Microsoft employee. Karen Kaiser was once married to Zilkha.

This whistleblower award is the largest amount ever by the SEC and is being paid out under an old authority to reward whistleblowers in insider-trading cases. But the $1 million amount underscores how the SEC is planning to use an expanded power to reward people who come forward with information that can help stop securities fraud.

The new financial regulatory law signed by President Obama last week grants allows the SEC to pay up to 30 percent of any monetary sanction to a whistleblower -- even if the whistleblower took part in misconduct. While the old law limited payments to insider trading cases, now the money can be doled out for information related to any securities law violation.

The SEC's whistleblower system has been considered ineffective. Only five people had received whistleblower payments before the Kaisers. The biggest payment was $55,220, while the lowest was $3,500.

Harry Markopolos, the whistleblower who tried to persuade the SEC that Bernard Madoff was running a Ponzo scheme, blasted the agency's program last year. "If my experience is any guide, the treatment accorded whistleblowers ranges from dismissive to outright unwelcome," he told a congressional committee.

The agency's internal watchdog has been equally critical. "We believe that the minimal use of the SEC bounty program can be attributed primarily to the fact that the program has not been widely publicized, internally within the agency or externally to the public," inspector general H. David Kotz wrote in a report earlier this year.

Even before passage of the new law, SEC officials said they were working to improve the agency's whistleblower procedures, building a database to consolidate whistleblower complaints and creating a new whistleblower office.

In the recent case, the SEC charged that Pequot, Samberg and Zilkha engaged in insider trading in shares of Microsoft. The case alleged that, in 2001, Samberg reached out to Zilkha for information on whether the software company would meet its earnings estimate. Zilkha, then working for Microsoft, checked by e-mail with fellow employees to find out whether Microsoft would meet or beat its earnings estimate for the quarter.

Zilkha then gave Samberg this information, the SEC said, and Samberg traded, earning Pequot more than $14 million.

Pequot and Samberg agreed to settle the charge for $28 million, including a $10 million penalty, the basis for the whistleblower payment. The case against Zilkha continues in administrative court. Pequot and Samberg didn't admit or deny the wrongdoing.